What sin has not been committed in the name of efficiency?
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
In the first place, there is no evidence at all that the planned economies achieve a higher degree of economic justice than does the free market. Even if we assume that there is a consensus on the need to redistribute purchasing power, it can be done without destroying the freedom of choice and efficiency of the market economy… [B]ut those who espouse any kind of planning in the interests of justice and fairness to the poor, never favor voluntary solutions to the problems they perceive in the distribution of income or property. When given the opportunity, the public-planning advocates have invariably accumulated as much power as possible over income and property. Stripped of their masks, what they really want is not justice but control over other people’s lives. [ The War Against Population, The Economics and Ideology of Population Control , Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988, pp. 76-77.]
The pulpit only "teaches" to be honest; the market-place "trains" to over-reaching and fraud; and teaching has not a tithe of the efficiency of training.
Fashion seldom interferes with Nature without diminishing her grace and efficiency.
Who is the best general? The grumbler who insists upon having everything in mathematical order, and who has not the smallest drop of the milk of human kindness about him, whenever it is a question of duty or efficiency.
The libertarian good society lies…in the maximum dispersion of property compatible with effective production or, as process, in progressive reconciliation of conflicts between equality and efficiency. Such process involves increasing dispersion both of wealth among persons and families and of proximate productional control among enterprises or firms.… [ Economic Policy for a Free Society . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948, p. 27.]
The market, if it can be kept honest and competitive, does provide very strong incentives for work effort and productive contributions. In their absence, society would thrash about for alternative incentives—some unreliable, like altruism; some perilous like collective loyalty; some intolerable, like coercion or oppression. [ Equality and Efficiency: The Big Trade-Off. ]
A weapon maintained at peak efficiency is all but ageless.
How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life. This is our modern danger — one of the waxen wings of flight. It may cause our civilization to fall unless we act quickly to counteract it, unless we realize that human character is more important than efficiency, that education consists of more than the mere accumulation of knowledge.
The tendency of foreign borrowing is in the same direction as that of domestic borrowing. As the latter obstructs the efficiency of constitutional methods, so the former tends to destroy the full autonomy of weak states. The granting of foreign credit is a first step toward the establishment of an aggressive foreign policy, and, under certain conditions, leads inevitably to conquest and occupation. [ Public Debts, An Essay in the Science of Finance . New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898, p. 25.]
Even if it were in the power of the employers to make a large addition to the rates of wages which they at present pay, it is very questionable whether any real good would result from their doing so. A considerable augmentation of the incomes of the working class is indeed very greatly to be desired if it proceeds from the limitation of their numbers, and increased efficiency of their labor. But where wages are kept at a low rate by their improvidence, or inferior qualities as workmen, any increase in their incomes, effected without merit on their part, is very likely to aggravate their improvidence, and perpetuate their inefficiency. [ An Essay on the Relations Between Labour and Capital , 1854.]
One definition of justice is “giving to each what he or she is due.” The problem is knowing what is “due”. Functionally, “justice” is a set of universal principles which guide people in judging what is right and what is wrong, no matter what culture and society they live in. Justice is one of the four “cardinal virtues” of classical moral philosophy, along with courage, temperance (self-control) and prudence (efficiency). (Faith, hope and charity are considered to be the three “religious” virtues.) Virtues or “good habits” help individuals to develop fully their human potentials, thus enabling them to serve their own self-interests as well as work in harmony with others for their common good. The ultimate purpose of all the virtues is to elevate the dignity and sovereignty of the human person. While often confused, justice is distinct from the virtue of charity. Charity, derived from the Latin word caritas, or “divine love,” is the soul of justice. Justice supplies the material foundation for charity. While justice deals with the substance and rules for guiding ordinary, everyday human interactions, charity deals with the spirit of human interactions and with those exceptional cases where strict application of the rules is not appropriate or sufficient. Charity offers expedients during times of hardship. Charity compels us to give to relieve the suffering of a person in need. The highest aim of charity is the same as the highest aim of justice: to elevate each person to where he does not need charity but can become charitable himself. True charity involves giving without any expectation of return. But it is not a substitute for justice. [“Toward Economic and Social Justice: Founding Principles of CESJ,” 1987.]
Economy does not consist in the reckless reduction of estimates; on the contrary, such a course almost necessarily tends to increased expenditure. There can be no economy where there is no efficiency.
Collective bargaining has become a dog chasing its own tail, with inflation eating up wage increases before workers ever get a chance to spend them. Even the union leaders who bring home the fattest contracts these days are concluding that some new stabilizing element is needed to keep the extra purchasing power from draining out of their members’ pay envelopes.[p]The welcome fruit of this discontent may be a growing concentration on wage plans geared to sharing efficiency, as measured by productivity or profits, in place of the sterile “battle for the buck.” [Labor Editor, New York Times ]
I recognize Sergeant Fallon instantly. She walks down the ramp with the efficiency of movement I remember well. There’s nothing casual about her stride. She walks onto the Midway’s flight deck like a predator checking out a new environment. I know that her left leg underneath the battle armor is titanium alloy and nanocarbon fibers instead of flesh and bone, but there’s no way to deduce it from her gait. As she steps off the ramp and toward her unit’s assembly area on the other side of the black-and-yellow safety line, there’s a phalanx of her troopers around her—not bodyguards, but limbs of the same belligerent organism, ready to strike out in any direction if needed.
We are operating at an overall mechanical efficiency of only four percent…. Therefore, we find that if we increase the overall mechanical efficiency to only twelve percent we can take care of everybody. That three-fold increase in the overall efficiency can only be accomplished by redesign. [ Utopia or Oblivion. ]
The protection of private property does more than promote market efficiency; it enhances the level of human freedom in the most intimate and personal parts of our lives. [“Rule of Law,” The Wall Street Journal July 27, 1994, p. A11.]
The Greatest Mathematical Error The Mariner I space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral on 28 July 1962 towards Venus. After 13 minutes' flight a booster engine would give acceleration up to 25,820 mph; after 44 minutes 9,800 solar cells would unfold; after 80 days a computer would calculate the final course corrections and after 100 days the craft would cirlce the unknown planet, scanning the mysterious cloud in which it is bathed. However, with an efficiency that is truly heartening, Mariner I plunged into the Atlantic Ocean only four minutes after takeoff. Inquiries later revealed that a minus sign had been omitted from the instructions fed into the computer. "It was human error", a launch spokesman said. This minus sign cost L4,280,000. -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
It's grad exam time... COMPUTER SCIENCE Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system. Prove that these fixes are bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150% efficiency in the new system. (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.) MATHEMATICS If X equals PI times R
it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the
length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1.
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
Describe the Universe. Give three examples.
Office Automation: The use of computers to improve efficiency in the office by removing anyone you would want to talk with over coffee.
What sin has not been committed in the name of efficiency?
In "King Henry VI, Part II," Shakespeare has Dick Butcher suggest to his fellow anti-establishment rabble-rousers, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." That action may be extreme but a similar sentiment was expressed by Thomas K. Connellan, president of The Management Group, Inc. Speaking to business executives in Chicago and quoted in Automotive News, Connellan attributed a measure of America's falling productivity to an excess of attorneys and accountants, and a dearth of production experts. Lawyers and accountants "do not make the economic pie any bigger; they only figure out how the pie gets divided. Neither profession provides any added value to product." According to Connellan, the highly productive Japanese society has 10 lawyers and 30 accountants per 100,000 population. The U.S. has 200 lawyers and 700 accountants. This suggests that "the U.S. proportion of pie-bakers and pie-dividers is way out of whack." Could Dick Butcher have been an efficiency expert? -- Motor Trend, May 1983
I already have too much problem with people thinking the efficiency of a perl construct is related to its length. On the other hand, I'm perfectly capable of changing my mind next week... :-) --lwall
Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky- way. Remembering what it was--what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light--I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe; he was God's, and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow.
To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.
He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began proving that no eventuality could alter the efficiency of the Drissa camp, that everything had been foreseen, and that if the enemy were really going to outflank it, the enemy would inevitably be destroyed.
The vibrations of the membrana tympani are transmitted to the internal ear partly by the air which the middle ear or tympanum contains, and partly by the chain of bones, consisting of the malleus, incus and stapes. Of these, transmission by the chain of bones is by far the most important. In birds and in the amphibia, this chain is represented by a single rod-like ossicle, the _columella_, but in man the two membranes--the membrana tympani and the membrane filling the fenestra ovalis--are connected by a compound lever consisting of three bones, namely, the _malleus_, or hammer, inserted into the membrana tympani, the _incus_, or anvil, and the _stapes_, or stirrup, the base of which is attached to a membrane covering the oval window. It must also be noted that in the transmission of vibrations of the membrana tympani to the fluid in the labyrinth or internal ear, through the oval window, the chain of ossicles vibrates as a whole and acts efficiently, although its length may be only a fraction of the wave-length of the sound transmitted. The chain is a lever in which the handle of the malleus forms the long arm, the fulcrum is where the short process of the incus abuts against the wall of the tympanum, while the long process of the incus, carrying the stapes, forms the short arm. The mechanism is a lever of the second order. Measurements show that the ratio of the lengths of the two arms is as 1.5 : 1; the ratio of the resulting force at the stapes is therefore as 1 : 1.5; while the amplitudes of the movements at the tip of the handle of the malleus and the stapes is as 1.5 : 1. Hence, while there is a diminution in amplitude there is a gain in power, and thus the pressures are conveyed with great efficiency from the membrana tympani to the labyrinth, while the amplitude of the oscillation is diminished so as to be adapted to the small capacity of the labyrinth. As the drum-head is nearly twenty times greater in area than the membrane covering the oval window, with which the base of the stapes is connected, the energy of the movements of the membrana tympani is concentrated on an area twenty times smaller; hence the pressure is increased thirtyfold (1.5 × 20) when it acts at the base of the stapes. Experiments on the human ear have shown that the movement of greatest amplitude was at the tip of the handle of the malleus, 0.76 mm.; the movement of the tip of the long arm process of the incus was 0.21 mm.; while the greatest amplitude at the base of the stapes was only .0714 mm. Other observations have shown the movements at the stapes to have a still smaller amplitude, varying from 0.001 to 0.032 mm. With tones of feeble intensity the movements must be almost infinitesimal. There may also be very minute transverse movements at the base of the stapes. Entry: 2
The determination of the absolute densities of gases can only be effected with any high degree of accuracy by a development of this method. As originated by Regnault, it consisted in filling a large glass globe with the gas by alternately exhausting with an air-pump and admitting the pure and dry gas. The flask was then brought to 0° by immersion in melting ice, the pressure of the gas taken, and the stop-cock closed. The flask is removed from the ice, allowed to attain the temperature of the room, and then weighed. The flask is now partially exhausted, transferred to the cooling bath, and after standing the pressure of the residual gas is taken by a manometer. The flask is again brought to room-temperature, and re-weighed. The difference in the weights corresponds to the volume of gas at a pressure equal to the difference of the recorded pressures. The volume of the flask is determined by weighing empty and filled with water. This method has been refined by many experimenters, among whom we may notice Morley and Lord Rayleigh. Morley determined the densities of hydrogen and oxygen in the course of his classical investigation of the composition of water. The method differed from Regnault's inasmuch as the flask was exhausted to an almost complete vacuum, a performance rendered possible by the high efficiency of the modern air-pump. The actual experiment necessitates the most elaborate precautions, for which reference must be made to Morley's original papers in the _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_ (1895), or to M. Travers, _The Study of Gases_. Lord Rayleigh has made many investigations of the absolute densities of gases, one of which, namely on atmospheric and artificial nitrogen, undertaken in conjunction with Sir William Ramsay, culminated in the discovery of argon (q.v.). He pointed out in 1888 (_Proc. Roy. Soc._ 43, p. 361) an important correction which had been overlooked by previous experimenters with Regnault's method, viz. the change in volume of the experimental globe due to shrinkage under diminished pressure; this may be experimentally determined and amounts to between 0.04 and 0.16% of the volume of the globe. Entry: PRACTICAL
21. _The Absolute Scale of Temperature._--Since Carnot's function is the same for all substances at the same temperature, and is a function of the temperature only, it supplies a means of measuring temperature independently of the properties of any particular substance. This proposal was first made by Lord Kelvin (_Phil. Mag._, 1848), who suggested that the degree of temperature should be chosen so that the efficiency of a perfect engine at any point of the scale should be the same, or that Carnot's function F´t should be constant. This would give the simplest expression for the efficiency on the caloric theory, but the scale so obtained, when the values of Carnot's function were calculated from Regnault's observations on steam, was found to differ considerably from the scale of the mercury or air-thermometer. At a later date, when it became clear that the value of Carnot's function was very nearly proportional to the reciprocal of the temperature T measured from the absolute zero of the gas thermometer, he proposed a simpler method (_Phil. Trans._, 1854), namely, to define absolute temperature [theta] as proportional to the reciprocal of Carnot's function. On this definition of absolute temperature, the expression ([theta]1 - [theta]0)/[theta]1 for the efficiency of a Carnot cycle with limits [theta]1 and [theta]0 would be exact, and it became a most important problem to determine how far the temperature T by gas thermometer differed from the absolute temperature [theta]. With this object he devised a very delicate method, known as the "porous plug experiment" (see THERMODYNAMICS) of testing the deviation of the gas thermometer from the absolute scale. The experiments were carried out in conjunction with Joule, and finally resulted in showing (_Phil. Trans._, 1862, "On the Thermal Effects of Fluids in Motion") that the deviations of the air thermometer from the absolute scale as above defined are almost negligible, and that in the case of the gas hydrogen the deviations are so small that a thermometer containing this gas may be taken for all practical purposes as agreeing exactly with the absolute scale at all ordinary temperatures. For this reason the hydrogen thermometer has since been generally adopted as the standard. Entry: 21
12. _Napoleon's Artillery Tactics._--During the war the French artillery steadily improved in manoeuvring power. But many years elapsed before perfection was attained. Meanwhile, the infantry, handled without regard to losses in every fight, had in consequence deteriorated. The final production of the field artillery battle, usually dated as from the battle of Friedland (June 14, 1807), therefore saved the situation for the French. Henceforward Napoleon's battles depend for their success on an "artillery preparation," the like of which had never been seen. Napoleon's own maxim illustrates the typical tactics of 1807-1815. "When once the _melée_ has begun," he says, "the man who is clever enough to bring up an unexpected force of artillery, without the enemy knowing it, is sure to carry the day." The guns no longer "prepared" the infantry advance by slowly disintegrating the hostile forces. Still less was it their business merely to cover a deployment. On the contrary, they now went in to the closest ranges and, by actually _annihilating_ a portion of the enemy's line with case-shot fire, "covered" the assault so effectively that columns of cavalry and infantry reached the gap thus created without striking a blow. It is unnecessary to give examples. Every one of Napoleon's later battles illustrates the principle. The most famous case is that of the great battery of 100 guns at Wagram (q.v.) which preceded the final attack of the centre. When Napoleon at Leipzig saw the allied guns forming up in long lines to prepare the assault, he exclaimed, "At last they have learned something." This "case-shot preparation," of course, involved a high degree of efficiency in manoeuvre, as the guns had to gallop forward far in front of the infantry. The want of this quality had retarded the development of field artillery for 300 years, during which it had only been important relatively to the occasional inferiority of other troops. After Napoleon's time the art of tactics became the art of _combining the three arms_. Entry: 12
This is the fundamental equation in the theory of turbines. In general,[7] w1 and w2, the tangential components of the water's motion on entering and leaving the wheel, are completely independent. That the efficiency may be as great as possible, it is obviously necessary that w2 = 0. In that case Entry: T
is the available head for working the turbine, and on this the calculations for the turbine should be based. In some cases it is necessary to place the turbine above the tail-water level, and there is then a fall [h] from the centre of the outlet surface of the turbine to the tail-water level which is wasted, but which is properly one of the losses belonging to the turbine itself. In that case the velocities of the water in the turbine should be calculated for a head H - [h], but the efficiency of the turbine for the head H. Entry: H
IMPERIAL CHAMBER (_Reichskammergericht_), the supreme judicial court of the Holy Roman Empire, during the period between 1495 and the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. From the early middle ages there had been a supreme court of justice for the Empire--the _Hofgericht_ (or _curia imperatoris_, as it were), in which the emperor himself presided. By his side sat a body of assessors (_Urtheilsfinder_), who must be at least seven in number, and who might, in solemn cases, be far more numerous,[1] the assessors who acted varying from time to time and from case to case. The Hofgericht was connected with the person of the emperor; it ceased to act when he was abroad; it died with his death. Upon him it depended for its efficiency; and when, in the 15th century, the emperor ceased to command respect, his court lost the confidence of his subjects. The dreary reign of Frederick III. administered its deathblow and after 1450 it ceased to sit. Its place was taken by the _Kammergericht_, which appeared side by side with the Hofgericht from 1415, and after 1450 replaced it altogether. The king (or his deputy) still presided in the Kammergericht and it was still his personal court; but the members of the court were now officials--the _consiliarii_ of the imperial _aula_ (or _Kammer_, whence the name of the court). It was generally the legal members of the council who sat in the Kammergericht (see under AULIC COUNCIL); and as they were generally doctors of civil law, the court which they composed tended to act according to that law, and thus contributed to the "Reception" of Roman law into Germany towards the end of the 15th century. The old Hofgericht had been filled, as it were, by amateurs (provided they knew some law, and were peers of the person under trial), and it had acted by old customary law; the Kammergericht, on the contrary, was composed of lawyers, and it acted by the written law of Rome. Even the Kammergericht, however, fell into disuse in the later years of the reign of Frederick III.; and the creation of a new and efficient court became a matter of pressing necessity, and was one of the most urgent of the reforms which were mooted in the reign of Maximilian I. Entry: IMPERIAL